Weekend Engagement - The Optimistic Worrier

Are you worried about growing older from a looks and financial security perspective?

I used to be a perpetual worrier. I worry about many things and would have those catastrophic thoughts or mentally prepare for the worst case scenario. For example, at the slightest flu or cough, I will worry if I have contracted Covid (which resulted a lot of "wasted" test kits because the results were mostly negative). You get the gist.

I am not sure if it's an age thing, but as I grew older, I tend to let go and not be so hard on myself for some things, or some would say, less "perfectionistic". If things go wrong, rather blame myself and be moody about it, I would see what lessons can be learnt from this mistake and just try not to repeat again.

As for what I worry about, in recent years (again, perhaps it's an age thing), I tend to segregate stuff into two buckets, (i) stuff that I have control of, (ii) stuff that I have no control of. If it's the first one, then I would act upon it. If it's second one, then I wouldn't want to spend time worrying about it because I can't change the outcome regardless.

For looks, I am not really worried about it. Everyone grows old and will age over time. If I have more wrinkles, so be it. If my hair start to drop or turn grey/white, that's fine. Related to "looks", I think being healthy is actually more important. That means eating well, getting adequate rest, and staying active as well. It's not so much about getting a hunky body but rather, keeping the organs and body functioning well. Good health does go a long way to ensure I can continue to pursue what I want in life.

Here's me getting some workout done in a gym, followed by a swim and soaking some Vitamin D from the sun.

For financial security, it's something that I have a keen interest personally. Being someone who enjoyed Maths in subject, and studied Statistics in university, I enjoy crunching numbers and formulas. So this extended to management of my personal finances. Financial security is always a work in progress, and I have personal targets at various stages of life, and so far, things are looking on track, so hopefully I can retire from my day job at the age which I planned to, and spend more time on my hobbies. I would be lying if I am not worried about my finances, because investments and markets are volatile and the value of my portfolio can be very different between now and even 1 year later. But I am a firm believer that volatiity is something that every investor has to accept and be comfortable with, and we can always take comfort that the long term returns of markets (or even cryptos?) would always be better saving your hard earned money in bank accounts and earning low interest.

This is my annual expenses since I started tracking from 2011. I have a few spreadsheets tracking my personal finances and this is one of them. For confidentiality reasons, I have removed the scale (which would show the amounts) and the labels for each category/colour. The onward trend just shows the effects of both inflation (especially in 2023) and an upgrade of lifestyle (I won't deny that! :P) as my earnings grow over time. When it comes to spending, I don't prescribe a limit for myself. Tracking these numbers just provides a reference to make sure my expenses don't spiral out of control and even as it goes up, the increase is reasonable and sustainable.

At the end of the day, I think I am still the worrier of things in life, but the change I have made is that I have turned from a pessimistic worrier to an optimistic worrier. These days, I am more optimistic (sometimes overly optimistic) about most things in life, but at the same time, I would keep an eye on what would go wrong or when my optimism is misplaced. It's easier to live life this way. Do you agree? Let me know in the comments below!

With that, that's all I have! Thanks for reading!

P.S. Apologies, I posted in the wrong community earlier. Have deleted the earlier post here. Apologies to those who have voted/commented, I will still be replying to your comments over there. Once again, my bad.